The power elite and the state

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Ian Kershaw

The climax and conclusion of one of the best-selling biographies of our time. In this volume, Ian Kershaw introduces Adolf Hitler at the apex of his power, idolized by millions of Germans for bringing the nation out of economic catastrophe. The Nazi party, the armed forces, the industrial cartels, and the civil servants are all "working towards the Führer." Meanwhile, Hitler is poised to realize his Mephistophelean vision : the subjugation of Europe under the Thousand Year Reich and, in the process, the annihilation of the Jews. For three years, Hitler and his relentless armies pluge the European continent into a bloodbath, as German soldiers, accompanied by fanatical SS units, slaughter conquered troops and civilians alike. Then, as Allied might prevails, Kershaw reveals a Hitler transformed from invincible warlord to desperate gambler, ultimately bringing destruction to his country and ending his life in a bunker under the ruins of Berlin. This book is based on immense research, including the use of many previously untapped sources. - Publisher.

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William B. Saxbe with Peter D. Franklin

"In this memoir, William B. Saxbe narrates his life's journey from his youth in a small Ohio town to his military career during World War II and Korea and through his career as a public servant in Ohio, in Washington, D.C., and overseas. He regales readers with stories about hopping a freight train when he was in the sixth grade, insights on being elected to the United States Senate, commentary on serving as Nixon's attorney general at the height of the Watergate scandal, and descriptions of life as the U.S. ambassador to India.". "This autobiography will delight the scholar and the casual reader. Readers of all disciplines and interests will find fascinating Saxbe's firsthand account of the demise of the Nixon presidency and will appreciate his candid, often earthy, prose."--BOOK JACKET.

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Yagami Kazuo

"The blame for a country's mistakes often falls on its leaders. In some cases, however, a leader's greatest mistake is to promote the mistaken goals of his people. Was this the case in World War II Japan? This book considers that question in the story of Japanese prime minister Konoe Fumimaro, who served as Japan's prime minister during one of the most difficult periods of the country's history. The author explores the general mood of 1930s Japan and traces Konoe's rise through the political ranks, including his first term as prime minister, his decision to step down, and his eventual comeback."--Jacket.

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Lev Razgon

Lev Razgon became famous overnight when his memoirs first appeared in Russia in 1988. They were a sensation both due to his angle of vision - Razgon was living among the Party elites as the Stalinist terror of 1937 began - as well as to his sophisticated understanding of both his country and his century. His remarkably long life took him from the shtetl and a family which had been unlucky with the authorities for many generations, to Moscow where he was a Communist journalist and writer, to 17 years in labor camps (a fate shared by both his wives). When he finally returned to Moscow for good, he went back to writing books for young adults and worked in secret on these memoirs. The last man alive to have actually attended and survived the Communist Party Congress of 1934 - most of those attending were dead within three years - Razgon brilliantly conveys the everyday atmosphere of a Soviet world of privilege about to be destroyed. Stalin had given secret orders that the families and friends of the powerful be decimated as a lesson in terror, a preemptive strike against any thoughts of a coup. In this book the personalities and stories which shaped Razgon's existence before and after his seventeen years in the camps are emphasized. Razgon's journalistic curiosity and interest in history as well as individuals led him in unusual directions. Much here is new: the characters and fates of the jailers; the camp lives of the wives of the Soviet elite, imprisoned as hostages to control their powerful husbands; and the frustration of formerly high-ranking military men, forgotten prisoners of the gulag as they see that World War II is approaching.